HID Global today announced it has deployed a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)-compliant and government certified solution for Electronic Prescriptions of Controlled Substances (EPCS) at Nemours Health System. The solution easily integrates with the Nemours’ Epic Electronic Health Records (EHR) system to automate their paper-based prescription system and provide and enhanced patience experience. In addition to increasing overall productivity, the new system makes pharmacy visits faster and more convenient for patients by eliminating the need to obtain paper-based prescriptions and reducing wait times.

According to a study by NASSCOM, the Indian healthcare IT market is valued at $1billion (about Rs 6,650 crore) and is likely to grow about 1.5 times by 2020. With increasing customer adoption, privatization of healthcare and rapid growth of technologies like predictive analytics and cloud, India poses tremendous opportunities for the healthcare IT market. HID Global has also announced that the solution is available in India.

Nemours’ previous manual process was extremely inconvenient for prescribing physicians and they could not issue prescriptions to patients during Telemedicine sessions — an otherwise efficient and real-time means for delivery of care. “Our mission is to be the guardians of children’s health and joy, which also extends to being the guardians of their health information,” said Bernie Rice, chief information officer with Nemours Children’s Health System. “To fulfill our mission, we needed an e-prescribing solution that would enable us to provide the exact care our patients need, when and where they need it, and that minimized impact on home and work life while providing all necessary protections for personal data.”

The new HID Global solution provides the convenience for the prescribing physician to choose the authentication mode that best fit his or her workflow in a given scenario. It empowers Nemours to attach a digital certificate of ID authentication to a FIPS 140.2 certified credential, using IdenTrust as the Certificate Authority for each authorized prescriber. The HID Global credentials also include one-time password (OTP) functionality that allows EPCS authentication using an OTP, without the need of a desktop reader.

OMNIKEY readers/encoders and FIPS 140.2 contact credentials with an OTP and display window

FARGO printers and AsureIDsoftware to print customize credentials

HID Professional Services for project management, installation, workflow analysis, training and support

“HID Global’s vast portfolio of secure identity solutions made it possible for us to deliver a highly customized system that addresses Nemours unique requirements,” said Sheila Loy with HID Global. “Our goal is to leverage our comprehensive offering to help organizations improve their users’ overall experience while increasing security at the same time. The new Nemours system is a positive reflection of how an organization can accomplish these twin objectives using HID Global solutions.”

Nemours Children’s Health System has reported significant improvements in their prescribing physicians’ experience, where they can now quickly and simply authenticate to write online narcotic prescriptions, in full compliance, from the hospital, a clinic, other work locations and from home. The hospital noted the solution is cost-effective and easy to support by their IT department and medical assistants are saving time in managing requests. Prescriptions can now be digitally monitored and tracked to eliminate paper and storage costs, and they can be sent for fulfillment prior to patients’ arrival. Investigations that were previously more difficult and time-consuming are also faster and more streamlined with digital documentation of all prescriptions.

“We are seeing extremely rapid adoption rates for our new e-prescribing system, and overwhelmingly positive feedback since its roll-out,” said Dr. David West, medical director for Nemours Health Informatics and the physician champion for the EPCS project. “Based on of the early success the deployment, we are now exploring how to leverage the HID Global EPCS architecture for other valuable capabilities, such as authenticating to VPNs and enabling remote access using credentials, key fobs, mobile smartphones, and other smart devices and one-time password tokens.”